Ukraine and Russia have been battling it out in English courts over whether Ukraine must repay a $3 billion Russian loan from 2013. The loan was unusual both in structure and in substance. For example, although essentially a bilateral loan, it was structured as a tradable Eurobond and held by the Russian sovereign wealth fund. The indenture trustee has been suing to enforce the loan. In March 2017, the High Court of Justice granted summary judgment for Russia. Although Ukraine had a number of plausible defenses to enforcement of the loan, the judge rejected them all. Here's Bloomberg, with coverage of that decision and of the ensuing appeal. Today, the Court of Appeal reversed that decision, sending the case back for discovery and a trial. Here's the decision, which Russia will appeal according to this Financial Times report.

In an earlier post, I noted some open questions that had to be answered before Crystallex could execute on PDVSA’s 100% ownership stake in PDV Holding (PDV-H). To recap: The federal district judge in Delaware let Crystallex attach the PDV-H shares on the theory that PDVSA is the Venezuelan government’s alter ego. The open questions relate both to timing (e.g., should there be a stay of execution pending appeal?) and process (how should an execution sale proceed)? A lot turns on the answers to these questions, as I’ll discuss below. First, however, here’s a simplified figure showing PDVSA’s corporate structure for readers who haven’t been following the dispute closely.

I have had a bit of time to digest the district court’s ruling that PDVSA is Venezuela’s alter ego, and here are some preliminary thoughts. The opinion is 75 pages and covers a lot of ground, but I’ll focus on perhaps the most important and least technical question: Is the case a one-off or a harbinger? Put differently, assuming the ruling stands after appeal and further proceedings in the district court, does it definitively establish that PDVSA is Venezuela’s alter ego? If so, the ruling could have important consequences for a future attempt to restructure the debts of both entities.

The answer isn’t clear. Or rather, it depends whether one wants a formal or a functional answer. Formally, the decision is a one-off; it need not have implications for future alter ego determinations. Functionally, however, the decision creates real risks for PDVSA and the government.

[Edit: Here is the opinion, with redactions related to the OFAC license.]

Just a quick post for now, as the court is keeping its opinion under seal for the time being. Crystallex, a creditor of Venezuela, has been trying to enforce its claims by attaching PDVSA's equity interest in PDV Holding, the ultimate U.S. parent of CITGO. For more background, there have been a number of postsalready here on Credit Slips. The district judge overseeing the action in Delaware has just granted Crystallex's request.

I'll have more to say once the opinion becomes public, although portions will undoubtedly be redacted in that version. The secrecy seems to be associated with an OFAC license obtained by a third party (presumably the entity financing this litigation), which Crystallex believes authorizes attachment notwithstanding U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Those sanctions require OFAC authorization for "attachment of an equity interest in any entity in which the Government of Venezuela has a 50 percent or greater ownership interest" (see FAQ 596) and define "Government of Venezuela" broadly to include PDVSA. I assume the redactions will mostly affect this part of the opinion.

Even more important, the opinion will have to explain why Crystallex, a creditor of Venezuela, can attach PDVSA's property. Presumably the reason is that the court has found the two entities to be alter egos. If so, that's an important ruling that may have much broader consequences in any attempted restructuring of PDVSA or Republic debt.

Edit: I should add that the fact that the court has issued the writ does not necessarily mean Crystallex will immediately be allowed to execute. Leaving aside any delay associated with appeal, the district judge has previously distinguished the decision to issue the writ from the decision to allow execution. Any attempt to execute the writ will also raise new questions. For instance, must there be an attempt to sell the shares? If not, how should the shares be valued (since Crystallex is only entitled to receive the amount of its judgment plus interest)?

Millions of American workers are parties to arbitration agreements that require them to bring claims against their employers in individualized arbitration proceedings (rather than as part of a class or collective action, as authorized by some federal and state laws regulating the workplace). In Epic Systems v. Lewis, a 5:4 majority of the Supreme Court held today that these agreements must be enforced even though the federal National Labor Relations Act declares it an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with the ability of employees to engage in “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” The decision is not unexpected, but it is consequential given the number of affected employees.

The case—really, several consolidated cases—was weird for a number of reasons. The NLRB had concluded that employers who insisted on individualized arbitration were engaged in unfair labor practices. Then, in September 2017, the Board fell under Republican control, and many wondered whether it would continue to defend that position. It did, but the administration worked hard to undermine it. In fact, the Solicitor General, which had previously supported the Board in seeking Supreme Court review, later filed a brief disagreeing with it on the merits.

Though none of it is earth-shaking, there has been a lot of news out of Venezuela recently, so it seemed an appropriate time for an update. The election looms. Henri Falcón leads some polls, though those are presumably unreliable indicators, given what Reuters slyly labels Maduro’s “institutional advantages.” A Falcón victory would increase the odds of a restructuring in the near future. A Maduro win might prompt additional U.S. sanctions; the Wall Street Journal (here, also linked above) speculates that these might finally target oil exports.

About two weeks ago, we held a small conference at the University of North Carolina School of Law: How Best to Restructure the Venezuelan Debt. The conference focused on proposals developed this semester by students in our joint UNC-Duke class on international debt finance. Some proposals started fresh; others took an existing idea and built on it. Four student groups presented their work and got feedback from a group of about twenty experienced lawyers, bankers and policy-makers. This was—to our minds—an exceptional group, extraordinarily knowledgeable about sovereign debt markets and with particular insight into Venezuela. Included were Lee Buchheit, Chanda DeLong, Brett House, Fulvio Italiani, Hongtao Jiang, Ruth Krivoy, Trevor Messenger, Siobhan Morden, Katia Porzecanski, and a list of others who we will leave unnamed for confidentiality reasons. We are immensely grateful to all of them for their generosity to us and our students.

After the student presentations, our visiting guests offered their perspectives about the Venezuelan debt crisis. It was a treat for us and our students to hear such experts—all of whom have given a great deal of thought to the crisis—discuss solutions to one of the most complicated restructuring problems in recent history. Not all of the discussion was intended for public consumption, but we have permission to post this video of a terrific conversation between Lee Buchheit and Brett House.

After incorporating feedback from the conference, our students have posted their proposals on SSRN. We are really proud of their work. We pushed them hard, at least as hard as we have pushed any prior class, and they responded in spades. Like every proposal, these have flaws (and some are more plausible than others on the risk-reward continuum). But with that caveat, each represents an immense amount of work and contains new ideas:

These papers build on a long line of students papers on topics related to sovereign debt restructuring, some of which have made it to publication. Last year, Dimitrios Lyratzakis and Khaled Fayyad got their proposal, Restructuring Venezuela’s Debt Using Pari Passu, published in the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law. And sometimes, when the proposals are especially creative or insightful, they manage to get the attention of reporters at the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, and elsewhere.

Earlier, we posted about whether holders of Venezuelan bonds would be better off accelerating and obtaining judgments sooner rather than later. In a nutshell, here was the point:

When a restructuring comes (and it will), the two primary weapons the restructurer is likely to use are CACs and Exit Consents. A bondholder who obtains a money judgment, as best we can tell, escapes the threat of either CACs or Exit Consents being used against her.

We heard from a number of people with questions prompted by the post. Here are some of them, and our conjectures as to answers.

For readers who haven't been following along: Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, is an adult film star who allegedly had a sexual relationship with Donald Trump in the mid-2000s. She recently sued Trump and other defendants, seeking to invalidate a settlement agreement in which she was paid to keep silent about the details of the alleged relationship. Here is her complaint, which includes the settlement agreement as an exhibit. And here is some coverage of background details.

The settlement agreement includes an arbitration clause, which should prompt some reflection about the use of arbitration to silence victims of sexual assault (a topic that has attracted attention in the wake of revelations about Harvey Weinstein). On the other hand, people are often too quick to blame arbitration for unrelated problems, so I hope this (long-ish) post can offer a bit of clarity. The short version: Whoever drafted the agreement between Clifford and "David Dennison" gets an A for cynicism, but would have to beg for a C in my arbitration class. (I’m guessing the draftsperson would fail professional responsibility...)

People have been asking for months when investors will accelerate PDVSA and Venezuela bonds that have fallen into default. Rumor has it that some investors have already done so. But there seems to be a consensus that investors aren't in a hurry. U.S. sanctions prohibit a debt restructuring, and few investors are eager for the legal battle that would follow acceleration. But we’re wondering if this view misses something important and unique to the Venezuelan crisis. It seems to us that investors who file suit may be able to negate most of the Republic's and PDVSA's restructuring tools, significantly enhancing leverage when a restructuring finally does occur and making it easier to hold out. So we’re a bit puzzled why some of the more aggressive investors aren’t already rushing to get judgments.

Both proposals are laudably clear-eyed about some fundamental aspects of the Venezuelan debt crisis. First, if it ever made sense to view PDVSA and the Republic as separate credits, that time is long past. Second, for a restructuring plan to be feasible, it must simplify an enormously complicated debt stock and encompass more than bond creditors. Thus, while neither creates a mechanism for encompassing all of PDVSA’s liabilities, both the Lerrick and Buchheit/Gulati proposals envision a restructuring of both bond debt and the pesky promissory notes that PDVSA has issued to trade creditors. The latter instruments are especially problematic from a restructuring perspective, because they lack contract-based mechanisms for modifying their terms. Finally, both proposals recognize that something must be done to protect oil-related assets, including future receivables, from holdouts.

These shared assumptions result in similar proposals. The difference is in the details, which turn out to be important. Let’s call the Lerrick proposal Strip, Swap, Restructure.

This past week, Bob Rasmussen of USC Law gave a talk at Duke on “Puerto Rico and the Netherworld of Sovereign Debt Restructuring.” Luckily for us, he also took a detour to UNC to talk to our International Debt students about whether PDVSA might use Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code to restructure its debts. Our foil for that discussion was a recent paper by Rich Cooper (Cleary Gottlieb) and Mark Walker (Millstein & Co.) proposing Chapter 15 as a possible solution to PDVSA’s woes. This is one of a number of extant restructuring proposals for Venezuela and PDVSA; Lee Buchheit (working with Mitu) has published several others (here, here, and here). The Cooper and Walker proposal is the only one to explore the Chapter 15 possibility in detail, and it thoughtfully makes the case for that restructuring option. In very condensed form, the proposal is for Venezuela to pass a new bankruptcy law governing PDVSA and other public sector entities, for PDVSA to restructure its debts using that process, and then for PDVSA to ask courts in the U.S. to recognize that bankruptcy under Chapter 15.

Should Venezuela worry that holdout creditors will use the strategy that NML Capital and other holdouts successfully used against Argentina? In this article, The Pari Passu Fallacy—Requiescat in Pace, Lee Buchheit and Andrés de la Cruz at Cleary Gottlieb argue not. Lee in particular has made no secret of his distaste for the “ratable payment” interpretation of the pari passu clause. (As many readers know, he is also Mitu’s longtime collaborator.) When interpreted to require ratable payments, the pari passu clause requires a government to pay holdouts in full if it intends to pay restructuring participants in accordance with the terms of their debt instruments. In Argentina’s case, the injunction resulted in another massive default, as the government refused to pay holdouts but could not find a way around the injunction.

Lee and Andrés argue that NML’s pari passu strategy was essentially killed by the person who gave it life, the late Judge Griesa. To oversimplify a bit, the judge’s initial decision--and a decision years before in Brussels in a case involving Peru and Elliott Associates--strongly implied that selective nonpayment is enough to violate the pari passu clause. That is, a government violates the clause simply by paying some equally-ranked creditors but not others. And, crucially, he remedied this breach by issuing an injunction barring everyone with any connection to the United States from cooperating in the continuing violation of the pari passu clause. Without that remedy, Argentina would simply have defied his ruling and continued to stiff holdout creditors.

The new semester has begun, and we are excited about the International Debt class we teach together, with students from both UNC and Duke thinking about the Venezuelan debt crisis. Their first task—and ours—is figuring out how much Venezuela owes, to whom, and under what contract terms. This year, we have been especially unreasonable, asking students, in just a few weeks, to find, read, and code all relevant contract terms for the entire unmatured bond debt of Venezuela and PDVSA. And the bond debt is only part of the story. For instance, another category of debt, which we haven’t encountered before, consists of local currency (bolivar) bank deposits of international airlines that fly routes to and from Venezuela, which the airlines are not-so-patiently waiting to convert into other currencies.

Ricardo Hausmann, Harvard economist and former Venezuelan Planning Minister, has been a thorn in the side of the Maduro administration. His blog posts at Project Syndicate condemning the Maduro administration’s continued payment of bondholders while the people of Venezuela starve may well have deterred new lending to the regime. Among other things, Hausmann-induced opprobrium at Goldman Sachs’s infamous "hunger bond"—now trading at a deep discount--has scared many in the market. For more background, check out Cardiff Garcia’s FT podcast interview with Hausmann.

Hausmann’s latest Project Syndicate post goes well beyond complaining about the ethics of Wall Street bond investors. Hausmann first sets out his view of the political realities, in which Maduro’s manipulation of elections and co-option of the military negate any realistic chance for the political opposition to overthrow the regime, notwithstanding U.S. economic sanctions. Given the severe humanitarian crisis, astonishing depletion of national wealth, rampant inflation, widespread corruption, and other harms inflicted or exacerbated by the Maduro regime, Hausmann advocates military action by the United States and like-minded nations. The other nations presumably include countries like Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Argentina, and Chile, all signatories to the Lima declaration condemning the Maduro regime.

On Wednesday, the Third Circuit granted Venezuela a victory in its ongoing settled-but-not-settled litigation with Crystallex. The case deals with a limited issue: Whether Delaware law imposes liability for the fraudulent transfer of an asset on an entity that is not itself a debtor. We want to use this post to speculate a bit about the implications the decision may have for the bigger Venezuelan debt drama. If the new decision is important, it is because it signals something about the receptivity of US courts toward claims that Venezuela, PDVSA, and perhaps US entities like CITGO are “alter egos.” We disagree a bit about that question. But first, some background on this aspect of the Crystallex case.

Over at Bloomberg, Katia Porzecanski notes that investors in Venezuelan debt are “worried they’re getting ghosted.” Overdue coupons are piling up, and no one is sure whether it is because the government is done paying or because U.S. sanctions have made financial intermediaries slow to process payments. Meanwhile, the government has maintained radio silence about the restructuring it purported to announce six weeks ago. The fact that a few PDVSA coupons have been paid in the meantime prompts Porzecanski to ask whether Venezuela is capitalizing on bondholder inertia to “quietly, selectively default,” and whether the government “may ultimately prioritize PDVSA’s debt over its own.” This Reuters article by Dion Rabouin answers the latter question in he affirmative, opining that Venezuela is more likely to default on its own bonds than on PDVSA’s, for two related reasons. First, PDVSA’s oil revenues are the government’s main source of foreign currency; second, a PDVSA default may prompt creditors to seize oil-related assets abroad, potentially including CITGO.

[Update: Here is the unsealed letter describing the settlementbetween Crystallex and Venezuela. As expected, it reveals nothing of note, simply explaining that the settlement's terms require confidentiality and redacting portions discussing the settlement itself. Also, note that the first paragraph of the original post (below) has been edited for clarity.]

We have covered Crystallex’s attempt to enforce its $1.2 billion judgment against Venezuela a bunch here on Credit Slips (for example, here, here, here, here, and here). In late November, the parties reached a settlement, shortly before a December 5 hearing in Crystallex's lawsuit seeking to attach assets belonging to PDVSA. The hearing was to address Crystallex's argument that PDVSA is the government's alter ego, and PDVSA’s cross motion to dismiss. A ruling in Crystallex’s favor would have let it look to PDVSA’s assets to satisfy its judgment against the government. As noted in the Financial Times, a pro-Crystallex ruling might also have had broader implications, potentially letting “holders of defaulted Venezuelan sovereign bonds ... seek to seize PDVSA assets, potentially including those of Citgo.”

We are gearing up to teach our joint class on sovereign debt next term and, as usual, are mulling over background readings to provide context for the work we ask of students—which typically involves designing a restructuring plan. To do this, students must read many long bond indentures and other financial contracts. Occasionally, we show students historical examples of such contracts, often from the era of absolute sovereign immunity, when sovereigns couldn’t be sued in national courts. Often, students ask why lawyers bothered with such extensive documents when there were no courts to interpret and enforce them. Which gives us an opportunity to talk about reputational and other non-legal mechanisms for enforcing promises, which we and many others have written about, probably more than is, strictly speaking, necessary.

Nothing in the sovereign debt literature, however, is as interesting and immediate as Barak Richman’s new book, Stateless Commerce, which explores how a robust system of international commerce can work for hundreds of years without any state involvement. His exemplar, building on classic work by Lisa Bernstein, is the diamond trade. In theory, opportunistic breach of contract should be endemic, given the ease of theft, the highly subjective nature of quality assessments, and the need for credit to acquire such expensive products. So one might expect the trade to flourish only if there are strong legal institutions capable of rigorously enforcing deals. Instead, the enormously profitable global diamond market has operated for decades largely independent of the state.

I made a joke in the comments to Mitu’s post about whether the arrest of Citgo executives strengthened the argument for treating Citgo as Venezuela’s alter ego. The joke wasn’t very good; I called Venezuela a “typical activist shareholder.” But Mitu generously took it seriously, asking whether this is the kind of behavior creditors should have expected. His question highlights some interesting legal questions. One is whether a creditor who knows about shareholder misconduct before voluntarily dealing with a corporation should be able to enforce its claims against shareholder assets. A second has to do with the legal standard for finding a corporation and its shareholder to be alter egos.

Robin Wigglesworth and John Paul Rathbone have an insightful piece in the Financial Times on how China, Russia, and the US are jockeying for position in Venezuela, which needs debt relief. The other governments are in a position to either facilitate or impede this, with conditions. Very roughly speaking, Russia wants regional influence, China wants oil, and the US wants regime change (ideally, while limiting Russian and Chinese influence in the region).

Finance has long been both a tool of, and a pretext for, foreign intervention in Latin America. For example, historian Emily Rosenberg and others have written about “dollar diplomacy”—the US government’s early-20th century practice of tying loans to control over customs and taxing authorities. The practice was justified by narratives about the benefits of financial expertise and professionalization, but of course it also served to protect the interests of US lenders while limiting the influence of European powers. Venezuela is no stranger to this history, having endured heavy-handed and often brutal interventions by western powers in the early 1900s.

Thankfully, the law is clear, right? Here's PDVSA motion to dismiss the lawsuit Crystallex has filed in federal court in Delaware, alleging that PDVSA is Venezuela's alter ego and seeking to enforce an arbitration award against the government by attaching PDVSA's equity stake in the ultimate U.S. parent of CITGO. Here's a summary of the arguments the parties have made thus far. The case matters, first, because if successful Crystallex will sever PDVSA's indirect ownership stake in CITGO. It also matters because, as we've discussed here repeatedly, any debt restructuring will implicate questions of alter ego liability. For instance, many restructuring proposals begin by urging Venezuela to withdraw PDVSA's right to exploit oil reserves, so as to better insulate oil-related assets from creditors. This short article explains some of the issues of alter ego liability raised by these and other proposals.

By a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Pence breaking the tie, the Senate has voted to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule forbidding the use of contract terms (in covered consumer loan products) barring consumers to bring or participate in class actions. The affirmative vote was supported by the usual narratives: Class actions make credit more expensive, arbitration is a better and more efficient means for resolving consumer disputes, class action lawyers are greedy parasites, etc. The truth of these narratives is irrelevant, it seems. For instance, though it is possible arbitration might be used to efficiently and effectively vindicate consumer rights, there isn't much evidence that it does so in practice, and there is evidence to the contrary. As a mechanism for collecting consumer debts, the history of arbitration is uglier still. And even if the availability of class actions increases the cost of credit--emphasis on if--it's not obvious this would be bad. If class actions deter lender misconduct--not that there's any history of bankmisconduct!--, and if this increases some lenders' costs and ultimately the cost of their financial products, then... I don't know. Who cares, I guess? Why should consumers victimized by fraudulent lender conduct subsidize cheaper credit for others? The contrary narrative--that class actions are just so darn expensive to defend that banks settle even the bogus ones for large sums of money--is so implausible that it should not be taken seriously without credible supporting evidence.

Sovereign bonds issued under the government's own law are supposed to be riskier than bonds issued under foreign (typically, English or New York) law. The logic is simple: Local-law bonds can be restructured with the stroke of a legislator's pen; with foreign bonds, it's not so easy. One would expect that difference in risk to show up in bond yields, which should be higher for local-law bonds, especially in times of uncertainty. There's quite a bit of research to back up that intuition (e.g., Bradley et al. (2017), Nordvig (2015), Chamon et al. (2014), Clare & Schmidlin (2014), Choi et al. (2014)).

Catalonian bond yields have been rising, thanks to jitters over the secession vote. But Nicolas Schmidlin, a fund manager (who worked on this topic as a graduate student and wrote the paper linked above), noticed something odd about bond yields.

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